6 Inventor Father-Son and Father-Daughter Pairs

Below:

Next story in Innovation

Can inventiveness run in the family? In honor of Father's Day,
InnovationNewsDaily found examples of inventor-or-discoverer
fathers whose daughters or sons followed in their footsteps. Many
families worked together, such as the Curies, who built on one
another's discoveries in radiation. One dad-daughter pair had far
different interests, but the daughter, Marion Donovan, had become
an inventor at a young age with the encouragement of her father.

Inventor or not, all dads can give their kids a sense of
curiosity, creativity and support for their projects, big and
small.

Zacharias and Hans Janssen

Many historians believe a Dutch lensmaker, Zacharias Janssen,
invented the first two-lens microscope with
the help of his father, Hans, in the 1590s. Their first model, a
hand-held piece, could magnify objects 10 times. Later, diplomat
William Boreel wrote a letter to the French monarchy describing a
model that was 2½ feet long and stood on a brass tripod shaped as
dolphins.

Alexander Melville Bell and Alexander Graham
Bell

The Bell family studied speech and sound for at least two
generations before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
The inventor's father, Alexander Melville Bell, and grandfather,
also named Alexander, were both speech specialists. In 1864,
Alexander Melville Bell invented an international alphabet called
Visible Speech, which showed deaf people how to shape their lips,
tongues and throats when speaking. He and his son later wrote
articles and books together about phonetics and Visible Speech.

For the Curie family, discovery appeared to be not just a
father-daughter connection but a whole family affair. Thirty-two
years after Pierre and Marie Curie shared a Nobel
Prize in physics, their daughter, Irène, and son-in-law,
Frédéric, shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry for synthesizing new
radioactive elements. Irène and Frédéric's children Hélène and
Pierre work as scientists in France today.

Sakichi and Kiichiro Toyoda

Sakichi Toyoda apparently combined the skills of his own parents,
who worked as a carpenter and a weaver in Japan. Toyoda invented
his first automated fabric-weaving devices in the late 1800s and
established his own loom company in 1926. His company soon began
supplying the leading textile manufacturer in Britain.

His son, Kiichiro, worked in the loom factory and patented a
carding machine. After the father died, the son and a team of
Japanese engineers to dismantled a Chevrolet to learn how it
worked. Kiichiro Toyoda manufactured his first cars in 1935,
calling the new motor company Toyota because he thought it was
easier to pronounce. Toyoda stepped down as president in 1950,
however, after massive layoffs and a worker strike.

Miles O'Brien and Marion Donovan

After her mother died, 7-year-old Marion O'Brien (later Marion
Donovan) spent her after-school hours in her father and uncle's
lathe factory in South Bend, Ind. Miles O'Brien and Richard
O'Brien had invented the South Bend lathe for grinding automobile
gears, earning themselves a fortune, the
New York TImes reported. Miles helped his young daughter
invent a new kind of powder for cleaning teeth.

After she married and had two children, Donovan invented a
waterproof diaper cover in 1946, sewing her first prototypes out
of shower curtains. The innovation, sold in Saks Fifth Avenue in
New York City, reduced diaper rash and was an "instant
success," according to the
Lemelson-MIT Program.

Throughout her life, Donovan earned dozens of patents for
household items such as a paper-based disposable diaper, a
compact garment hanger and a soap dish that drained into the
sink.

Wilbert and Robert Gore

Sports clothes, insulation and medical devices all use the
invention of this father-son pair. In 1969, Robert Gore created a
thin membrane of Teflon,
coated it with urethane, then bonded it to nylon fabric. The
resulting material had pores that were large enough to let air
through but were too small for water droplets. It was at once
breathable and waterproof. Robert's father, Wilbert, helped him
improve the fabric, then named it Gore-Tex and sold it through
the family business, W. L. Gore & Associates.

Since then, Wilbert, Robert and the company have invented more
new materials, including a breathable, windproof fabric called
Windstopper and Glide brand dental floss.